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The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

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Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#31

Post by hiptobecubic »

gruez wrote: post #15
endisneigh wrote: post #11

I believe the smartest thing you can do if you are reading this in America is to buy a house that you can afford in an area you would like to live in for more than a few years with more than 1 bedroom and rent out the additional bedrooms. Setting aside appreciation, doing this is the closest thing to a guaranteed success imaginable. Leverage lowers your start-up costs, renting enables all your house work to be deduct…

>your opportunity cost is 0. not really, you still need to factor in the cost of capital (ie. downpayment) and the risk that the housing market might collapse.

And the fact that you have some other asshole living in your house now.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#32

Post by paulryanrogers »

vinceguidry wrote: post #22
seibelj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at it is that there is absurd amounts of empty land throughout the country. Places were undesirable and cheap, and people of moderate means bought them, improved the area, and over decades it became a desirable area. Young people need to go to shitty places that are cheap and then make the place better. Many young people want to live in SF or NYC. Go to Detroit instead.

The process of making unwanted real estate wanted is called real estate development . It's not done by "young people just moving there." That just makes crappy real estate more crowded. Real estate development is very much a "build it and they will come" sort of deal. It takes capital, a lot of it, to make an area desirable. You can't just dump it anywhere, there has to be a good reason to dump it in this particular…

What are the good reasons to develop an area? Proximity to a better one? Fresh water sources? Desirable weather? Good schools? Unpolluted environment? Nice parks?

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#33

Post by symlinkk »

endisneigh wrote: post #11

I believe the smartest thing you can do if you are reading this in America is to buy a house that you can afford in an area you would like to live in for more than a few years with more than 1 bedroom and rent out the additional bedrooms. Setting aside appreciation, doing this is the closest thing to a guaranteed success imaginable. Leverage lowers your start-up costs, renting enables all your house work to be deduct…

More realistically this would look like “get married, buy a house, split the mortgage”.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#34

Post by cammikebrown »

rekabis wrote: post #10
fideloper wrote: post #5

> 5) You don’t need as much house as you’ve been lead to believe. Instead of trading up for a larger fancier house with more debt as you age, consider living simply and buying additional homes for diversified income. IMO (in the process of doing this myself), this is the most important point

> 5) You don’t need as much house as you’ve been lead to believe. For living arrangements, you are mostly correct. I can exist very comfortably in about 1,000ft². Heck, even 800ft² would be comfy and cosy. My problem involves my hobbies and domestic activities: I need a 200ft² cool room for the enormous amounts of fruits and vegetables I harvest every year, canning all that shit needs a 150ft² summer kitchen so I don…

You don’t “need” any of that.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#35

Post by xyzzyz »

alphabettsy wrote: post #14
rekabis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5) You don’t need as much house as you’ve been lead to believe. For living arrangements, you are mostly correct. I can exist very comfortably in about 1,000ft². Heck, even 800ft² would be comfy and cosy. My problem involves my hobbies and domestic activities: I need a 200ft² cool room for the enormous amounts of fruits and vegetables I harvest every year, canning all that shit needs a 150ft² summer kitchen so I don…

Many of the needs seem like wants and then it just depends on how much you these things are worth to you.

> Many of the needs seem like wants

This is true of initial 800 sq ft as well.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#36

Post by HarryHirsch »

ip26 wrote: post #24
seibelj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at it is that there is absurd amounts of empty land throughout the country. Places were undesirable and cheap, and people of moderate means bought them, improved the area, and over decades it became a desirable area. Young people need to go to shitty places that are cheap and then make the place better. Many young people want to live in SF or NYC. Go to Detroit instead.

That’s at the root of all these stories about, ”I can’t afford to live where I grew up” . Buddy, I can’t either, but when my parents bought it was a fruit orchard. Today it’s the hottest real estate market in the world. It’s apples and oranges.

A colleague told me about her daughter - she finished college and has a regular job but cannot afford to move out. That's in rustbelt central. Yes, you can live with roommates, but if you are late 20's it becomes awkward, and when at some point the children arrive it becomes a habitability issue.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#37

Post by causality0 »

chmod600 wrote: post #13
stareblinkstare wrote: post #4

Why does this read like a penance?

A lot of people place misdirected blame for unaffordable housing on themselves or others who buy, fix up, and rent out houses. It's pretty obvious that the cause of unaffordable housing is elsewhere. But being the one to actually collect rent is a kind of guilt-by-association.

I mean, sure. At the end of the day all land owners, and I speak as one, exist at the end of a chain that began with theft and likely violence. The surface of the earth is by nature no less a resource that should be common to all man as the atmosphere and the oceans. Neither the landlord with more than he can live on nor the renter with not enough to live on can exist without someone at some point having taken more than their fair share by guile or force of arms.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#38

Post by pdonis »

vinceguidry wrote: post #22
seibelj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at it is that there is absurd amounts of empty land throughout the country. Places were undesirable and cheap, and people of moderate means bought them, improved the area, and over decades it became a desirable area. Young people need to go to shitty places that are cheap and then make the place better. Many young people want to live in SF or NYC. Go to Detroit instead.

The process of making unwanted real estate wanted is called real estate development . It's not done by "young people just moving there." That just makes crappy real estate more crowded. Real estate development is very much a "build it and they will come" sort of deal. It takes capital, a lot of it, to make an area desirable. You can't just dump it anywhere, there has to be a good reason to dump it in this particular…

Perhaps the problem with the availability of housing is the "real estate development" model you describe, which is capital intensive and therefore will be undertaken by large corporations instead of by the people who will actually live in the area and who therefore have a personal stake in how livable it is. Perhaps if more development was done by "young people just moving there", we would have more livable areas and less competition for housing.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#39

Post by pdonis »

lmm wrote: post #17
seibelj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at it is that there is absurd amounts of empty land throughout the country. Places were undesirable and cheap, and people of moderate means bought them, improved the area, and over decades it became a desirable area. Young people need to go to shitty places that are cheap and then make the place better. Many young people want to live in SF or NYC. Go to Detroit instead.

> Places were undesirable and cheap, and people of moderate means bought them, improved the area, and over decades it became a desirable area. Generally by doing things that are now illegal (sometimes that were already illegal but not enforced at the time).

What things described in this article are now illegal?

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#40

Post by d1lanka »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #26
rekabis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5) You don’t need as much house as you’ve been lead to believe. For living arrangements, you are mostly correct. I can exist very comfortably in about 1,000ft². Heck, even 800ft² would be comfy and cosy. My problem involves my hobbies and domestic activities: I need a 200ft² cool room for the enormous amounts of fruits and vegetables I harvest every year, canning all that shit needs a 150ft² summer kitchen so I don…

I am so tempted to get rid of my books. I will keep the 1st editions, and most reference books. I feel can toss everyone of my computer books. (Not one did I find well written, or worth keeping. If anyone decided to write a computer/programming book take out every unneeded word. Maybe take a technical writing course if you live near a good university?) It's just hard to get rid of reference books.

Yeah, get rid of those computer books.

That's what the internet + ebooks are for.

Unless a book has a special meaning to me personally or is considered life changing, I rarely keep any physical books.

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